


Lady and Ghost

by Periwinkle39



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Daemons, F/M, canon except the wolves are daemons, jonsa, jonsaweek2019
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:06:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21523426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Periwinkle39/pseuds/Periwinkle39
Summary: A brief peek into an alternate universe in which the Stark direwolves are daemons.
Relationships: Jon Snow/Sansa Stark
Comments: 12
Kudos: 131
Collections: JonsaWeek2019





	Lady and Ghost

**Author's Note:**

> I've been getting re-obsessed with His Dark Materials thanks to the HBO show, and couldn't resist a daemon AU for jonsa. If you are not familiar with His Dark Materials, "daemons" are a physical manifestation of a person's soul that exists in the form of an animal and can talk. Daemons take different forms during childhood and eventually "settle" into one form. They are also generally the other gender, which is to say girls/women have male daemons and vice versa, so Ghost is Sansa's daemon and Lady is Jon's. 
> 
> (Sidenote: gender is not a binary, just working within this universe.)
> 
> Enjoy!

Sansa’s Ghost was always a bird when she was little. No matter the kind of bird, he was always beautiful and colorful, the size depending on Sansa’s mood. 

And he sang. 

Boy, did he sing. Never particularly loudly because Sansa was a lady and a lady never made herself a nuisance to others, so certainly her daemon wouldn’t. His music was always soft, and usually welcome to everyone except Arya, whose daemon Rodrik (varying among types of wolves, lions, dogs, bears or horses, always itching for a fight) would snap or growl in response. 

Joffrey’s lioness always snarled at Ghost too. That should have been a sign. 

Upon their arrival at King’s Landing, Ghost flew above the traveling party, an eagle with his talons out. Sansa asked him later what this meant, and he answered, “To ward off the vipers, my dear. There are many.” But even Ghost’s prescience couldn’t have prepared them for what would happen. 

Ghost had never been anything other than a bird until the day Ned Stark was killed. The moment Sansa realized her begging for mercy was for naught, Ghost became a direwolf, large and imposing, white with red eyes, but his howl still felt like a song, an elegy that lasted three days.

He settled as a wolf. Sansa found more comfort in this than she could have possibly imagined. 

They were Starks of Winterfell.

* * *

Jon would never have chosen the name Lady himself. 

That was Sansa’s fault. At five years old, Sansa saw his daemon as a small gray wolf but she wasn’t frightened. 

“She looks mean, but she’s not,” Jon had said.

Sansa replied, “I know. She’s a lady.”

To Jon’s great annoyance, Lady never wanted to be called anything else again. 

She did not change so often as the other Stark children’s daemons did before settling. Ned wondered if this meant something, but Maester Lewin told him not to worry. It was the daemon’s way of easing the boy’s restless heart. The other Stark children, sure of themselves and sure of their identities did not need this reassurance.

That Lady was a direwolf so often unsettled Catelyn, who took it as a reminder of Ned’s betrayal even more than Jon’s Northern looks. 

Catelyn never saw the dragon.

Lady was only ever a dragon when he was alone. Jon didn’t like it when she was and said as much.

“I don’t scare you, do I? I’m not even a full grown dragon.”

“I just don’t feel like myself when you’re like that.”

Lady breathed out fire. “Sometimes we can't help who we are.”

“What do you mean?”

“Perhaps someday, we’ll know. Perhaps our mother was a dragon.”

That very question was on the top of Jon’s tongue when he and Ned parted, he toward the Wall and Ned south to King’s Landing.

“Is my mother alive? Does she know about me? Does she care?”

_Is she a dragon?_

But he didn’t ask it.

When Lady heard Ned say the words, “You are a Stark. You may not have my name, but you have my blood,” she settled as a direwolf, small, beautiful, powerful.

Jon asked if she was sure later that night.

“We are Starks of Winterfell,” was her reply.

* * *

As Jon and Sansa talked alone by the fire at Castle Black, drinking soup and ale, Ghost felt Lady nuzzle him and felt safe for the first time in a long time. Jon and Sansa were too deep in their conversation to see what was happening in the dark corner of the room where their daemons had cuddled together.

“Should we tell them?” Lady asked.

“No,” Ghost said. “There is too much to do yet. They are not ready.”

* * *

On the boat, as he knocked on the door, Lady whispered, “I don’t know about this, Jon. I don’t know about her.”

“What else would you have me do?”

Lady didn’t answer. She didn’t know, but she wouldn’t go in. She sat sadly outside the door and thought of Ghost.

* * *

Ghost walked behind her. He preened, prouder than he’d ever been as the chants began. 

“QUEEN IN THE NORTH!"

When Sansa sat down, he circled her throne before sitting next to her.

“They’re here,” he whispered.

“Who?”

“You’ll see.”

That night, Lady and Ghost howled joyfully together from the rooftop of the keep, Starks of Winterfell, home together at last. 


End file.
